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Welcome to the School of Physical Sciences

The School of Physical Sciences is situated on the Canterbury Campus, in the refurbished Ingram building which has had over 8.5m investment over the past few years.
The School is a dynamic department, achieving national and international excellence in both teaching and research in Chemistry, Forensic Science and Physics. It offers a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate taught and research programmes, with some programmes offering opportunities to study abroad and in industry.

In 2016 we were teaching over 1000 undergraduates, with 10% of our new students being from overseas.

We have over 80 postgraduates and more than 40 full time academic staff in addition to over 30 technicians and administrative support staff.

Our graduates do exceptionally well in the employment market. We maintain good links with our alumni who return to talk to current students or for further study. Many of our alumni around the world occupy prominent positions in the public sector, in industry and in academia.

The future of our School

We aim to develop international collaborative research links and maximize the amount of time available to staff to undertake research activities. We are aiming to submit at least 80% of eligible staff to the Research Excellence Framework.

Enhance our leading research activity

The Schools world-leading research feeds directly into our teaching so that the courses on offer are at the cutting-edge of their discipline with students benefitting from our expertise on the very latest breakthroughs and advances in scientific research.

Provide excellent teaching underpinned by cutting-edge research

We will continue to provide both an excellent student experience and a high quality degree leading to a wealth of opportunities for the most able students regardless of social and educational disadvantage.

Raise student expectations and achievements

Graduates from the School of Physical Sciences have an excellent employment record. Our links with industry provide students not only with the opportunity to develop work experience during their degrees, but also equip them with the general and specialist skills and knowledge needed to transfer to the workplace.

Maintain the high employability of our students

We are an enterprise-active department with two companies associated with facial imaging in the Forensic Research Group. Our Applied Optics Group continues to host the cutting-edge photonics companies Nanomet UK and Optopod Ltd and a number of School staff are interacting profitably with Kent Enterprise.

Nurture our excellent enterprise activity

We aim to maintain our delivery of an excellent outreach programme to pupils in the community and South-East region and to deliver subject-specific outreach activities at a level appropriate to any audience to as many students as possible.

Deliver an effective outreach programme to the community

School of Physical Sciences, Ingram Building, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NH